


Chocolate

by lookingdead



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, because thats what i do, kind of a character analysis type of deal?, mostly angst, or something, really just a lot of karkat angst, so lets say chocolate gets trolls drunk, yeah so chocolate gets trolls drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 12:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingdead/pseuds/lookingdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dave accidentally discovers an interesting fact about trolls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> This seemed cooler in my head.

You managed to alchemize some chocolate.

It’s not the best, a bit bitter. The texture is a bit off, doesn’t really melt like it’s supposed to. You savor it anyway. Another piece snaps off in your mouth. 

The wall is cold against your back and there isn’t any light in the hallway. Trolls don’t like light, unless of course they’re Kanaya, but she’s apparently some kind of special case. Pretty much all of them seem to be “special cases” though, don’t they.

They throw some pretty obnoxious fits if you shine a flashlight on them. At least, Karkat does. That’s nothing substantially interesting or really able to be considered news, though, as the tiny, nubby-horned, and largely unthreatening looking troll-kid has a tendency to blow molehills into star systems.

You bite off another tiny piece of shitty chocolate and it’s still one of the best things to enter your mouth in a year. 

Or was it longer?

How long had they even been on this stupid meteor? How long had they been crawling around in this sunless environment pretending that “days” and “nights” exist for sleep schedule sake? Why were you even bothering with that? When was the last time you slept? 

Your eyes were a bit tired, but that didn’t mean much. You’ve just altogether forgotten to sleep sometimes and have passed out. Other times you’ve slept too much, mostly because you were bored.

You go to take another bite and pick up on the faint echo of footsteps. 

You stop.

You hold your breath.

Is that a step?

You listen hard.

Step… Step…

Someone’s coming. 

Step Step Step

The footsteps echo off the walls. There’s a familiar pattern to them, heavy and slightly scuffing. You’ve learned to recognize the sound of all their walks. Kanaya’s were light and even and Terezi’s were quick and quiet. Rose’s were almost like Kanaya’s but with a bit less grace and a little more intensity. Gamzee’s, who you’d only heard once, were loud and clunking with lazily dragging feet, but not quite like this. These were too light to be Gamzee.

Karkat didn’t pick up his feet when he walked either. There are two glints of light in the distance. 

You wrap the tin around the bit off corner of the chocolate bar.

Step Step Step Step Step

“Hey, Strider.” 

Step Step

“Hey, Vantas.”

Step Step Step Step Step Step Stop

His footsteps cease to echo and any sense of movement dies. The scraping of his over-worn shoes on tiles cuts into your ears. 

StepStepStep

Next thing you know, the chocolate bar is being tugged on. You tug right back and pull it out of leathery hands. You hold it above your head where he can’t reach. 

“Uh, yeah, no.”

“I just wanted to see what it was, you churlish sack of excretions,” he insists. You can feel heat from his arm as he tries to reach it. He fails and steps back. 

“Oh, jeez, well, when you put it like that, grabbing shit out of a dude’s hand is clearly the path to take,” you say dully. “My bad.”

There is a long enough pause that you start to lower the bar, a movement he attempts to act on quickly by grabbing at it again. You pull it back above your head again. All you can really see is the glint of his eyes, maybe a bit of his shape and the bright orange, dulled in the dark, of his horns buried in his hair. 

He eventually gives up and steps away again.

“Just tell me what it is, nookdrip” he says. 

“You can see it from there, can’t you?” You lower it just a little bit. 

He huffs and calms his stance as he glances at your hand.

“Yeah, I fucking figured it was chocolate. Where’d you even get that?” He doesn’t pause long enough for you to respond. “No, wait, what the fuck are you doing eating chocolate in a dark hallway, where it has been explained to me that humans cannot properly see, while everyone else is either sleeping or on their way to their respiteblocks?”

“Oh is it sleep time again?” You lower your arm again for just a second and God dammit, he just doesn’t stop. You hold it behind your back. 

“What, you just alchemized an entire bar for yourself? That’s gross,” he says. “You’ll puke.”

“I’m not gonna puke, it’s one bar.” It is an admittedly large bar, but you weren’t planning on eating it all at once anyway. 

“Right, I forgot you were that kind of ‘totally cool’ where science bounces off you like motherfucking moon beams.” 

“Hmm, your forgetfulness seems worrying. Might wanna get that checked.”

You push away from the wall and walk around him. He just follows you. 

“Seriously, though, you’re not actually planning on eating all of that. I didn’t think you were letting yourself sink that far down the proverbial slob ladder,” he says, walking with you like a stray cat you fed once. “Congratulations, you’ve fallen from douchebag to gutter-prick.” 

Molehills into star systems. 

“If I give you a piece will you let it go?” 

“I never said I wanted any, I just wanted to inform you that find your life choices here particularly vile,” he says. 

“Because I will not hesitate to give you a piece, being the charitable Strider I so am,” you offer. You’d actually prefer not to, though. 

“I don’t need your handouts, Strider,” he says. 

“I will not argue with you, you do not need this chocolate.” Those jokes made more sense when you first met him. He’s gotten skinnier since then. 

His eyes are completely glazed over with light.

“No, I don’t. I’ve decided not to sink that low, actually. I know everyone else has decided to let themselves go to shit on this stupid rock ride, but I personally would like to maintain some level of continuity,” He says.

“Yeah, okay, but you’re basically continuity’s worst enemy. You kick continuity’s ass. You take continuity, shove it up against a wall in a back ally, take its money, and then throw it down on the ground and kick it in the ribs until it starts spitting up blood,” you say. “You hand out free non-consensual continuity abortions.” 

“I feel like you’ve said that to me before and like I was just as confused and repulsed the first time,” he says.

Shit. Shit, that’d be the second time you’ve rehashed comebacks. Shit… You can’t keep doing that. You need something vaguely eventful to occur on this meteor before any more boredom clogs up your ability to make witty remarks. 

“Do you want a piece of this chocolate or what?” you say. 

He folds his arms up and you see his shining eyes glance about for a moment. 

“Man, fuck it, fine, there’s nothing to lose anymore. I lost all the shits I ever had to give a long time ago. I am incapable of giving a shit. I am permaconstipated,” he says, sighing. 

“Dude, it’s just chocolate, chill,” you tell him. 

“Sometimes I forget that you’re a massive shitstain but then you just go and say stuff like that and it just drills a hole in my cranial shielding spheroid and gently salts my cerebral meat with the concept like a fine steak.” He doesn’t look at you when he says it and instead chooses to pick at the pilly fibers of his sweater

“Sometimes I wonder what page you’re actually on because I’m pretty sure that the teacher assigned us to page 125, but you’re clearly way over on like 343 or something, possibly in an entirely different text book,” you say. You snap off an accidentally pretty generous corner of the chocolate bar. Shit, you think you may have given him a third of it.

You can always alchemize more. 

He looks apprehensive, but takes it when you hand it to him. 

He looks it over and sniffs it and licks it with his weird black tongue and trolls are weird and you’re pretty sure you got stuck with the weirdest of the weird trolls.

You take another bite yourself. 

Eventually he sticks it in his mouth and chews it very very slowly before swallowing it. You end up standing alone in a hallway eating chocolate together in silence and you’re not sure how awkward it is. Then he folds his arms tight over his chest and just kind of stares through the wall next to you. 

You ignore him for a minute or so, wondering if he’s going to go away now or if he’s going to say anything or what. 

There is a pause where neither of you speak a word and where each snap of breaking chocolate your teeth plucks into the air reverberates achingly into your eardrums. 

Then he finally talks.

“So you’re seriously going to eat all of that?” he says, partially disgusted, mostly strangely fearful. 

“Well, I did alchemize it to eat it, yeah,” you say.

“Yeah, but, are you supposed to do that?” he asks.

“Well, I mean, I’ll make some more later, I guess, if other people have really gotta have some. Then everyone will be able to get their slobbering taste buds on this spectacular bar of excellence and pure goddamned gluttonous wonder,” you say. 

There’s more silence. 

“So do humans just eat chocolate like its fucking food or something?” He fidgets oddly, swaying a bit on his feet. 

“Um, Yeah. Are there other ways you can eat something?”

“You’re such an asshat, oh my god.” He pulls his hand through his hair exasperatedly, claws tangling in the mess. “I’m so sick of this whole, ‘alien culture’ bullshit where nothing makes any sense. I’m going to go lie down. See you later.” 

He turns away from you and walks down the hall with livid steps, his whole body rigid. His footsteps slam off the high walls and ceilings and slowly fade away until he’s a couple right turns away. 

You wrap up the half of your chocolate bar that’s left to save it for later and go to look for something else to do, choosing to not investigate, as you really would rather not know. 

You go to wander in the entire opposite direction. 

This meteor is boring, though, and you’ve seen every inch that you want to see. You end up wandering back to the common area, where Rose and Kanaya normally spend there time. They are predictably having a very nice long in depth conversation about something you could not give less of a fuck about even if you tried. 

Karkat had said everyone had been going to sleep. Apparently these two didn’t count as everyone. Maybe they’d just said they were going to sleep to get him to go away or something, or maybe they’d forgotten that they were going to sleep after they’d gotten into a conversation. 

You flop down on a couch and they don’t notice. You flip through the nearest book on the coffee table; look to see if maybe there’s something halfway interesting. You’re not going to lie, sometimes there are some pretty cool things in these books that you are hopelessly and unironically interested in. 

“…Beforan society seems odd as well from what I’ve heard from…”

“…True, I suppose it’s really not quite the same as human society…”

“…very peculiar… treats him like a pet, it’s very strange and regrettably interesting…” 

“…wish she wouldn’t….”

“…keep an eye on both of them…”

“….very different societies…”

“…very interesting… should like to know more…”

“…might be some books…could look…”

“…next dream bubble…”

“…we’ll have to…”

Your eyes droop closed and you nearly doze off. 

You repeatedly try to get your eyes to stay open, over and over again for quite a bit. Eventually you realize you’re going to have to keep yourself a bit busier if you’re going to stay awake. 

When you are finally able to successfully peel your eyes open, you force yourself up and off the couch, throwing yourself into dizziness. You walk through the haze like it’s a wall and come barreling out on the other side with some kind of blurted out greeting that your mind had no time to examine and look at and say “hey maybe that doesn’t really make sense” which results in some brief glances from the other two before you leave.

You stumble into the hallway before your balance and sense of being comes back. You go to walk around aimlessly until you feel like you’re actually awake again and not just sleepwalking. 

After an unknown amount of time, you find yourself near Karkat’s little “secret” room deal and decide that, okay, you need to just hang out with someone and you’re actually getting along better with him lately so you may as well just go talk to the guy. You might even want to see what was wrong before. He does tend to exaggerate, but if something actually is really wrong, you may want to fix it. 

You walk into his room, or block, or whatever they’re calling it, and he’s just lying there on his pile of horns, like he always is. It makes you uncomfortable just looking at it, all the awkward metal jabbing you everywhere. It’s just a bad place to sleep. It’s no wonder he always looks like a walking carcass.

“Alright, Vantas, I’ve been thinking, or well no, I haven’t been, but I am now thinking that I am hella bored and was wondering if you’d dealt with the chocolate thing thoroughly and if you’d want to maybe, I dunno,” you pause as you stand in front of his horn pile. “Maybe… What do trolls do? Terrorize villagers? Terrorize youtube commenters?” 

He’s just kind of lying there on his back, staring straight up at the ceiling. His irises have been changing all kinds of weird colors lately. They were purple last time you checked. They’ve apparently decided to turn a rosy pink. It looks weird against the gold of his sclera. However, right now, the pinkish irises are blown to slits by enormous pupils. 

He just kind of blinks a few times before his eyes dart over to stare at your face. 

“When did you get here?” he asks slowly. 

“Um, just now?” you say. 

“Oh…” he says, a little astonished. 

You run out of things to say momentarily and have to do some searching to remember what you were talking about. 

“So uh, come on, get up, we’ll go do something,” you say. 

“Oh… okay… hold… hold on, give me a second…” he says. 

He starts to push himself up onto his elbows, sending a couple horns rolling off the pile. He rolls over, causing some of the horns to honk and even more to go astray. He ends up destroying the pile he slips down onto the floor on his stomach. 

Then he pushes himself up and stumbles to his feet. 

He’s also fucking smiling, making all the yellowed, crooked, and monster-sharp teeth in his horrible overbite split up his scabby lips.

“Okay… okay, so, so what, fantastic adventure are you taking me on?” he asks lazily. 

“Uh, I, haven’t thought of anything yet…” you say, distracted by his unusual compliance. 

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” he says. His arms hang loosely at his sides. “I’m pretty alright with anything, okay, just, yeah.”

He takes a few steps passed you, looking at you the whole time like he’s trying to guide you out of the room or something. Each of his steps seems wobbly and confused. 

“Les go then…” he says. He sounds completely out of it. He sounds like Rose does when she’s drunk. 

His shoulder smacks the door frame on his way out and it takes a second for him to groan out and “ow” and start cursing at the stupid goddamend fucking asshole door frame, piece of shit’s too narrow, should be wider, goddamned fucking “Are you coming? On this glorious… what are we doing? Are we going to… to can town? God can town is the fucking bomb, you know, I… Fucking can town, and the Mayor man, the fucking Mayor…” 

It would appear that the only person besides you not doing anything is somewhat intoxicated. Fascinating. Also confusing. 

“So are you aware that you’re drunk or did this happen without your knowledge or what?” you say.

“Hm? Hm…” He rubs an eye with a claw-torn sleeve. “No… no, I’m not, human drunk, I didn’t have any of Rose’s stuff. Is it that bad? I can’t, tell. I feel like pudding.” 

“You walked into a wall,” you say bluntly. 

He thinks about it a second. “I can’t… I can’t fucking believe that, you… nothing happens to you at all? You’re totally normal? That’s not, even fair, you’re fucking, you’re a piece of shit, and kind of, also really awesome sometimes, but for that you’re a piece of shit, Strider, shit…” 

Oh.

“Chocolate gets trolls… drunk…” you say slowly. You’re somewhat unsure. That sounds ridiculous and weird and like a really stupid plot device in a bad fanfiction written by a teenage girl to avoid her schoolwork.  
“If drunk means this then yeah, totally,” he says. “’Snot fair that you can just, eat it and nothing happens.”

He takes some uncoordinated steps back toward you. He’s not too terrible at walking, but he’s not great either. 

“Look, man, I’m not really the kind of guy to care about his shit, but maybe you should just go back to your horn pile, take a nap or some shit,” you say. “I don’t trust you not to break things when you’re sober, let alone when you’re all chocolate drunk.” 

He rolls his eyes at you and stands in front of you. “I’m fine. Jeez… I… This isn’t so bad… I’m fine.” 

“Yeah, cool. Now, look at that nice comfy, horrible, horn pile ya’ got there. Why don’t you go take a fucking nap?” you say. 

He sighs and his whole head rolls back, but he does make his way over to the pile to fall into it, which destroys it a little bit more.

“Good, now, just stay right the fuck there,” you tell him. 

Maybe you shouldn’t leave him alone. This is your fault. You gave him the stupid chocolate. You should probably be responsible for the drooling idiot you’ve produced. 

You don’t have anything else to do anyway. This also might be funny. Actually, it has a high potential to be fairly hilarious. 

Maybe someday you’ll accept that you’re on a meteor in the middle of paradox space with six other people and your pride doesn’t matter anymore and you don’t really need to justify your actions in your head before doing them. 

You let yourself sink into the horn pile. 

He stares at you as you do so.

You were correct in assuming that this is the least practical thing to sleep on anyone could have chosen. There are sharp edges digging into just about every inch of your skin and it’s noisy and just a really dumb idea.

“So… so why were you like, hiding in the hall, if chocolate’s jus’ food fer you?” he asks. He’s only slurring a little. His voice isn’t any quieter, though. Hell, it might be louder.

“’Cause I didn’t want anyone jackin’ the shit I’d worked so hard to alchemize,” you say. “You know, didn’t want grey monster alien things and sisters getting their various forms of digits all over my candy.”

“Well, it happened anyway. You suck ass at hiding,” he says. “You gotta do more than jus’ lean ‘gainst a wall, alright, s’not gonna work, okay? Your stealth wreaks like vomit and feces, ‘kay?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be going around bothering dudes about their chocolate,” you respond. 

“Look, I wouldn’t a even taken it you were all insistin’ and shit,” he says.

“I feel like saying something like ‘oh, btw, chocolate turns me into a fucking drunken slop-baby, just so you know, which is why I am so conflicted about consuming this shit’ or something, I dunno, I feel like there should’ve been some clarification there,” you say. Your thoughts follow his next words before he even says them.

“How was I s’pose to know nothin’ happens to humans when they eat chocolate? It seemed fuckin’ self explanatory, alright?” he says, predictably. “B’sides, I kind of, I dunno bro, its’not that bad. I jus’ wanted to do it once, I dunno, maybe not. I feel stupid about it. Like I feel disgusting.”

Words come out of his mouth without being properly molded first.

“What, you mean guilty? Don’t worry about this shit. People do dumb things and we’ve got like three years on a space rock with nothing to do but dumb things. Who gives half a fuck?” you say. Though, you get what he’s saying wholly. The whole concept of being drunk has become less appealing to you as Rose’s habit has become such a frequent sight. 

He rubs an eye and scratches his nose and pulls some of his hair out of his face. It reminds you of the too long bangs hanging in your own face, but you try not to mimic him. You turn your face toward the ceiling.

The ceilings used to feel so much higher. 

“S’when… d’you think this’ll wear off?” he asks. 

“The hell if I know.” 

You spend a long time just staring at the ceiling and talking about the most horrendously stupid shit that you’ve heard in a long time. Most of this comes from random little chunks of Karkat’s intoxicated word vomit

You realize that whatever chocolate does to trolls, it’s not exactly the same as being drunk. It’s a little more like weed, maybe? You’re not sure. You don’t know anything at all about drugs, to be honest. You used to pretend you did but you’ve never really been all that educated on the matter of their effects on people’s behavior. 

All you know is that at some point he asks, “So, death isn’t even real, is it? Like, you die, but you don’t die, it’s just your meat carcass that shits out. Then you live for like, ever? So it’s not really like… ‘the after life’ ‘cause you aren’t actually dead yer just not made of meat anymore. Yer made of ectomeat or some shit.”

And before you can think of a proper response to that he says, “So do like plants do that or, trees? Trees? What if when you cut down trees to make yer hive it just releases them into another plane to be trees to build ectomeat people’s hives.”

You let the word-clusters just run out of his mouth. You’re not sure if you should laugh or if he’s actually making genuine sense. 

“And wait wait, then, no, the trees in dream bubbles are memories, so, are tree souls, our memories? Do things only have souls because we remember them? Do we have souls or what even are those things? Do trees have memories? Do trees remember us walking around them and have weird little nonsense trolls running around around them in their dream bubbles?”

He pauses.

“Do trees dream?”

You stare at him. 

“I’m never ever alchemizing chocolate again,” is the only response you can think of. 

“What if trees are actually more sentient than we are and they have a higher intelligence we can’t grasp and they dream in the fourth dimension?”

“I have no idea what the fuck you’re spewing right now, Vantas,” you say. 

“No but… but really…” he says, nearly incoherently. 

“Go to sleep or something,” you say. You’re pretty tired yourself. You don’t really want to sleep, though. You doubt he does either.

“No, nah, not now,” he says. “I don’t want to deal wi’dream’bubble shit right now…”

He rolls over in the horns, making them shift and honk. He ends up altering the pile quite a lot just to get on his side. The movement pulls his sweater up enough for you to see his stomach. It dashed up with tiny pale grey scars with one big thick white one near his ribs. There are tiny dark lightning bolts of stretch marks near his hips. 

He’d normally cover himself immediately.

He’s facing you now and his eyes are drooping and tired but still as focused as they can be on you. 

“You know, I, whenever we don’t… end up in the’bubbles, I have like the same dream,” he says. “And’m always on a beach, at low tide, in themiddle of the day, and its’like this big space where there’s little white crabs all over the place and I keep stepping on’them.” 

He’s a bit closer to you than you’d like. His breath is terrible. So is yours.

“They don’t pinch, though,” he says, looking away briefly. 

His eyes slip closed for a moment. Then he yawns in your face, showing all of his crooked yellow fangs and his tar-black tongue, and his breath smells like actual shit. 

You gag melodramatically. “Jesus fucking christ, Karkatherine, do you ever brush your goddamned teeth?” 

“We don’ really have stuff for that. You sure don’t. Y’smell like, god fucking only knows what you smell like, it’s just awful,” he responds lazily. 

“You smell like you just ate through every dumpster at every Denny’s in the county,” you say. 

He laughs lethargically and his eyes close again. 

“You think this is gonna wear off soon?” he asks. 

“I don’t know man, it’s been like half an hour now, it should start to go away soon, I’d think,” you estimate. 

“Mmm…” 

He stares at the corner.

“Thanks for, you know, yeah…” he says. “You’re not that much of a douche, maybe. Well, you still, maybe are, but, not that much. You’re kind of an awesome friend, I… yeah… just… You are, kay? So thanks for not just, walking away…”

You know it’s because he’s intoxicated, 

“Yeah, no problem…” 

He readjusts himself some more until his forehead is against your shoulder.

“Okay, we’re not, we’re not cuddling, or anything, alright?” you say, squirming away from him.  
Although, you probably haven’t touched another living being in a very long time, and it really did feel nice. Not in any weird way, just in the sense of ‘you are a human and need physical contact’. 

“Wasn’t doing anything like that,” he says, following you and destroying your efforts to keep a personal bubble.

You stiffen up when his head is against your shoulder again. He doesn’t move anymore than that, though, thankfully. You relax a little. 

It’s not terrible. It’s a bit comfortable. 

In fact, just that is easing and melting anxiety you didn’t know you had.

You sigh.

You really do hope he comes down, or sobers up or whatever the effects of this type of intoxication wearing off would be referred to as, soon. 

You make sure to not let any more trolls near anything with chocolate in it. 

You sort of want hot cocoa, though.


End file.
